Angel Insights Blog

The following is part of our periodic ACA Blog series highlighting ACA member expertise and insights on resources for angels.  The topics will vary and include ways ACA angels are making best use of their time – and often ACA benefits – to make smart investment decisions.  This tip is how Women’s Capital Connection engages their members in educational discussions based on ACA webinars. Thank you Aviva Ajmera for sharing! 

We look forward to more member tips for angels.  When you have a resource to share with angels please contact Sarah Dickey, ACA Membership Director to learn more. 

By: Aviva Ajmera, Women’s Capital Connection

I used to take the ACA webinar emails for granted—just another email in my inbox— but what I found is they could help us learn. As Vice Chair of the Executive Committee one of my responsibilities is group education. Although every member in our group is a subject matter expert in something, we aren’t all experts in every aspect of angel investing. We have members that are veteran investors and we have investors new to angel investing,  ACA Webinars have been a great addition to our group development. 

Our Approach: Use 15 minutes at the start of monthly group meetings for discussion of a recent ACA webinar topic.

Process:

1. One month prior to group meeting: Select an upcoming webinar topic to attend based on feedback from members about their interests
2. During webinar: Take notes to create a handout for the upcoming member meeting; handout includes discussion points, a summary of key takeaways, and resource links. Also see who else from our group is on the webinar and touch base with them afterwards to collaborate on key learning.
3. During group meeting: Provide webinar handout to members and facilitates a discussion to uncover what members agree or disagree with, and include in group best practices 

Benefits:  

1. Broadens our group perspective with reminders, new ideas or thinking that isn’t always top-of-mind
2. Starting meetings with these educational discussions broadens the group energy beyond just “analyzing potential deals”, and helps members make stronger, more informed decisions

Key Learnings: I was surprised by how enthusiastically the group embraced this education. I think the key is to keep the write up crisp and the discussion short and focused. I also regularly ask the group what they would like to learn more about and actively search ACA archives and upcoming webinars for these topics, so our discussions are relevant to what the group wants to learn.